1. Field of the Invention
The present hammer invention relates to hammers with nail pulling apparatus and more particularly pertains to new and improved nail-pulling hammers wherein nails of any size may be pulled faster and more easily.
2. Description of Related Art
By way of example, the prior art includes U.S. Pat. No. 559,049 patented Apr. 28, 1896; U.S. Pat. No. 30,786 patented May 16, 1899; U.S. Pat. No. 724,542 patented Apr. 7, 1903; U.S. Pat. No. 1,425,369 patented Apr. 8, 1922; and U.S. Pat. No. 1,535,685 patented Jun. 9, 1924.
Prior art hammers designed for pulling nails of various length usually use more than one claw carried on the head. The shortcomings of such a design were the extra weight, an inability to stand the strain caused from heavy pulling of difficult nails, and the added expense of manufacturing added claws.
Commonly available hammers today all have a single nail-removing claw located at a rear portion of the hammer body. Standard carpenter's hammers include rip-claw or straight-claw hammers, and curved claw hammers used for finish work. One well known problem with a standard straight claw hammer is its inability to remove long nails. Once the nail is removed in the forked claw to a horizontal distance of about one inch to one and a half inches, leverage is lost and the hammer head prevents further removal. Moving the hammer to make contact with the bottom of the nail will provide some additional leverage to further remove the nail, but may cause wood damage or may break or strip the nail head.
There are other problems relating to the removal of longer nails, partially removed nails, bent nails, or partially driven nails. Nails driven into or near a knot in wood must immediately be removed. For this type of nail removal, it is often necessary for a carpenter to use a special nail pulling tool. If a hammer is used, the carpenter must place a block of wood or other hard object underneath the head of the hammer to raise the fulcrum point above the wood surface. This provides greater leverage, but is inefficient in removal of the nail and may result in instability with the hammer handle pulling off to one side.
These problems cause frustration and lost time to a carpenter or user of the standard hammer. A user may need to descend from a ladder or scaffold to search for a piece of wood to use in removing a nail. When removing a series of nails, much time is lost picking up separate objects to assist in removal of each nail.
The hammer of the present invention aids in removal of long nails, short nails, big nails, small nails, or nails with only a small portion of the nail exposed without all the above shortcomings.